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The American Girl (2004)

by Monika Fagerholm(Favorite Author)

3.38 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1590513045 (ISBN13: 9781590513040)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Other Press

review 1: I feel a little dishonest marking this as "read" since I didn't actually make it all the way through! It is not very often that I abandon a book so early, but this was one of the worst books I've ever tried to read. As others have commented, I'd like to believe that part of the problem was the translation. However, I can't imagine all the verbs were lost that way--it was full of random sentence fragments, dependent clauses with nothing on which to depend. I also found the transitions between time periods to be very confusing; I could never figure out whether something was happening in the current time or in the past. I read until my kindle said I was 10% of the way through, and I would really like those 45 minutes of my life back!
review 2: I don't know if... more something gets lost in the translation here, but I'm not sure I really know what happened in this book. I found it a difficult read, and there are a couple of reasons for this. First, the action goes backward and forward constantly which, to me, is very confusing. There is a lot of repetition as the events are revealed through the jumping around. Secondly, and I don't know if this is a Swedish thing, the style bothered me. At points I found the imagery striking, and I felt the author was very successful in creating a dreamy overlay for her story. At the same time, the repetition of phrases such as "that is," "in other words" and "so to speak" really grated on my nerves. I really felt like I was on the "spiral staircase to nowhere" that is referenced throughout the book. The going around and around became tiresome for me; I just wanted to get to the point...which could probably could have happened in 300 pages as opposed to 500...and I still don't know exactly the "truth" of the novel. I received this as part of The Glitter Scene giveaway since it is actually Part 1. I'm hoping Part 2 brings clarity, but I'm afraid it may all be too abstract for me. less

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